Super Stardust Portable Coming Soon

Hi, my name is Kimmo Lahtinen and I was the programming lead for Housemarque on Super Stardust Portable. Super Stardust Portable is the PSP version of our previously released PS3 title Super Stardust HD with some nice additions we think you’ll enjoy. And you’ll be able to enjoy them very soon. Super Stardust Portable will be available for download on the PlayStation Store on Thursday, December 4th for just $9.99!

If there is one word to describe the game, that would be ‘intense’. Your goal in the game is to simply destroy the waves after waves of enemies we throw at you and try to not get killed. If you’re not constantly on the edge of your seat when trying to blow up everything in sight with dozens of asteroids coming at you all the while screen is filled with explosions and fireworks, you should probably apply for a job as an astronaut or something. :)

When we first got the idea from Sony about doing a PSP version of the game, we were thrilled. We think that Super Stardust is a perfect fit for a portable device, do a 10 minute session of Endless while riding on the bus into school. Pick up and play, it’s like it was designed to be portable from the start. Then it hit us, how are we going to get this thing running on the PSP. Even though the PSP is the most powerful for a hand-held console, it’s still a totally different animal from the processing power of the PS3. We’ve got more than ten thousand objects and hundreds of thousands particles flying around in the PS3 version and we probably use more than 10GHz of processing power from the machine.

What we learned from developing the PS3 version is that sphere level is actually quite a large playing space and requires thousands and thousands of objects rotating around before the game level doesn’t feel empty. It took a lot of trial and error to get that working on the PS3 version. The PSP version is played on a wrapping 2D field that is optimized for the PSP screen. There was a lot of tuning to make it not feel either crowded or too large so we could have the gameplay and levels stay as fast as before. After we found the optimum size, we felt that we had lost nothing of the old intensity in the conversion. In addition we actually do a few tricks to make it look like you’re still playing around a planet too. After a lot of work and because of the choices we made, we managed to get more than a thousand objects on the field with 60 frames per second. That’s a lot of things to shoot. We’ve also got the Super Stardust trademark particle effects working on the PSP, so the explosions look as pretty as ever.

Another change we faced was the controls. The PS3 version uses two analog sticks for control and shooting. How are we going to get that working on the PSP where there’s only one analog stick available? What we decided to go with is to map the shooting to the face buttons and let the game interpolate the shooting direction when needed. This took a lot of effort to get right, but the end result feels perfect. We were glad to find out that even for those that are completely new to PSP system, it didn’t take long to figure out the controls. We also made a new shooting mode to make full use of the buttons. If you tap a shooting direction, the shots will spray around. This also makes for another interesting gameplay choice. More weapon power on one focused point or less in a wide spray? The controls are also configurable, so if someone out there doesn’t like the choices we made, they can remap the controls for their own liking.

Some other new things we have for PSP version:

A completely new mode: Impact. In impact mode you cannot shoot, just bomb and boost. The boost is a bit different in this mode in that when you boost through something, you receive more boost energy and your multiplier goes up at the same time (max 100x), so the key to high scores is to chain your boosts into as long as you can and to collect points with huge multipliers.

A new final boss: One complaint on the PS3 version was that the final boss was way too easy. I should warn you that your first meeting with Professor Schaumunds’ new machine of destruction could leave a bit of something in you pants. ;)

Even more intense gameplay. We still have a casual mode that is suitable for everyone, but one thing we found out about the PS3 version is that for the best players it takes hours and hours to complete the arcade game. For this version we have upped the difficulty curve too after a few of the first difficulty levels. This is a portable game, you shouldn’t have to play a day to get challenged in the game even if you are that good.

Our main goals were to keep the same high intensity gameplay from the PS3 version and do it at a consistent 60 frames per second. We feel that both goals were successfully completed, but I’ll leave the final judgement to you.

See you on the high score lists! (Yes we have online high scores too!)

Very cool, I like that you guys didn’t just take SSHD and tone it down for a portable. Is there any chance of the new modes and boss finding their way to the PS3 version?

Also, are there plans for more updates to the PS3 game? I still play it all the time with my friends, it has endless staying power IMO, but I’d love more; new modes, new levels, anything you can throw at us :) Please keep us in the loop, the Housemarque site unfortunately doesn’t do it in the slightest.

I’m getting this, just not next week. I have a bunch of games – just spent $26 at the PS Store last night – and next week Soldner-X is supposed to release. So with LBP, Resistance 2, SSF2HD, Bioshock, and then Soldner-X I won’t have any time for it or my poor PSP.

On question, since Super Stardust HD helped usher in the Trophy era, perhaps use a game like Super Stardust Portable to bring Trophies to the PSP. Trophies that you earn on your PSP and later can be synced to the PS3 or the Media Manager and adds those Trophies to you level. I don’t recall seeing any request or mention of it so I wanted to throw it out. See what people though.

Everybody wants “MOAR TROPHIEZ” and if you can get Trophies on the PS3 and the PSP there would be more happy gamers. I know I would.

Bought it yesterday (every now and then being in europe has positive sides for games, too!) and it’s awesome.
Also…. an UMD for that? I’ve always thought it was better to fill a disc before burning it, so the simple tought of a ~70mb game on a support that can hold almost 2gb makes me… i don’t know, but it’s not a nice feeling.

@ NeoTechni, This is a game from the SCEE area (since Housemarque is from Europe I believe). They normally got the SSD HD expansions before us too. This is like Europe having to wait for PSN games that come from SCEA area.

I like Super Stardust HD, but I don’t want to buy it twice. I appreciate the effort that goes into these kind of things, even a port — moreso when the port is to a lesser platform because you’ve got to retain what made the original great while working with what you’ve got for power. That being said, gaming’s an expensive enough hobby without buying games more than once.

Great work on Super Stardust HD, though. Definitely brings back some arcade memories.

PSP is portable and this game is being added to my library of games on my mem stick. just gotta do something about its sucky size (1gig). perhaps on friday ill be able to upgrade to that 4gig i saw online somewhere.

So are these online leader boards tied into our PSN IDs? I’d prefer to see better psp use of one unified PSN ID and all the stuff that goes with it like friends list access and messaging before we even start thinking about trophies. Especially considering that the playstation website is switching to just using the PSN ID.